OSU Launches Innovation Center Focused on Global Food Concerns

OSU has announced the formation of the Food Innovation Center: Foods for Global Security, Safety and Health Promotion.  The Center for Innovation will take an interdisciplinary approach to four key themes:  designing foods for health, ensuring food safety, advancing biomedical nutrition in disease prevention and health promotion, and examining global food strategy and policy.  The center is being led by Ken Lee, professor of food science technology and director of the College of Food Agriculture and Environmental Science’ Center for Food Safety and Agrosecurity.  The center will engage more than 80 faculty members from 12 colleges.  

Dr. Steve Clinton, a principal investigator of the center and professor of internal medicine says the center will capitalize on OSU’s strong and diverse academic programs.

“You can count on a few fingers the number of academic institutions that have colleges of agriculture, business, public health and veterinary medicine, integrated programs in human nutrition and food science, as well as a Comprehensive Cancer Center, on one single campus,” says Clinton.  

The center is one of two new centers funded by OSU to boost interdisciplinary efforts in an effort to improve the human condition.  (The other center is the OSU International Poverty Solutions Collaborative.)  Each new center will receive $750,000 a year for a five-year period and it is expected that they will each be self sufficient in five years.

For details, see the release from OSU